Replace hot air in a containment system

[BillP]

Hello
I am in the process of a concept for a new high density data center in a country closer to equator.

I have used hot-aisle containment with DX InRow cooling and kind of like the concept.

When thinking of making that system better, I came up with the following idea. I want to know if this is practical and how it will improve the overall system.

My idea is to use some fans + duct on top of the hot aisle to remove the hot air and pump filtered ambient air into the rear of InRow cooling system (via a duct under the raised floor).

This way, the InRow do not have cool the hot air (estimated 30-35C) but just the ambient temperature (estimated 25-29C) or better in other countries.

The questions I have are...
1. Will this improve the efficiency, performance of the cooling system?
2. Will there be too much complication + operating expense to operate the new air-replacement system?

Thank you in advance
George

[upsguy_apc]

Free Air Cooling...... The answer to this question is not going to be answered accurately on this forum because, what is the RH of the air being pumped into the hot aisle. Are you going to be pumping in warm air that is dirty? If the outside air is dirty will you have to provide heavy filtering to clean the air and if so will you have to increase the CFM rating of the supply free air fans to increase the air flow into the hot aisle. Overall you will be making the design more complex, increasing overall CAPEX to install the design and the increase if any will probably be negated by having to replace air filters, maintenance, and power consumption of the free air fans..

Schneider Electric has a Air Side Economizer called Ecobreeze that does what you are describing but probably wouldn't work near the equator. I'd stick with the preengineered solution provided by APC if I was you.

Good luck with your project..

[BillP]

The air in the hot aisle should be hot and not be removed. This would influence your efficiency negatively.

The inrow coolers work better at high temp deltas.

What you can do to improve your efficiency is rise the set points of the DC air temp (in front of the racks) and also the chilled water temps.

What temperatures are you using in your DC and what is the outside air temperature ?

[BillP · Accepted solution]

Thank you for your suggestion. Indeed Air Side Economizer is pretty close to what I was thinking. Great if we can make this happen economically.

Thank You
George